Creating quality is a key building block of any good marketing strategy, but we all struggle with coming up with content ideas. It’s important that the ideas we do have are relevant and add value to our target audience, but when you’re drawing a blank, what do you do? Here are six useful tools that will ensure you'll never run out of content ideas for your Outdoor Brand again.
Ask Your Audience
What better way to find what of content your target audience wants you to create than asking them directly?
Q&A’ or Poll’s on social media are a great way of getting your target audience to engage. Ask them to leave a comment with the topics or type of content they want to see more of.
Not only is this an opportunity for you to create content for your social media channels, but it will give you an insight into what your target audience is actually interested in.
It’s a no brainer!
Google Trends
A great way of getting an insight into relevant topics in your industry is by looking at what is trending.
Google Trends is a free tool that allows you to see what is popular in your industry right now. It will give you a better understanding of what people are looking for, allowing you to fill the demand with relevant content.
Your content, whether that's blogs or videos, are also more likely to be found in Google searches, as more people will be looking for content around that specific topic.
Answer The Public
One key goal for every piece of content we create is for it to be found in search results. When brainstorming content ideas for your Outdoor Brand, it’s important that every idea is relevant to the questions your target audience actually want the answers to.
A tool that can give you an insight into the questions being searched for by users online is Answer The Public.
You type in a keyword or topic and Answer The Public will come up with hundreds of suggested, what, why and how style questions. This is a clever way of finding out which questions your audience want answering, enabling you to create engaging content around those questions.
Google Alerts
Another way you can stay ahead of the trends is by setting up Google Alerts for key search terms or topics in your industry.
Google will send you an email notifying you when it finds a new result, such as a blog, article or web page, that matches your search term, helping you to stay informed about everything that is happening in your industry and hopefully, gives you inspiration for your next piece of content!
And don't worry about spam, as you can digest these alerts into daily or weekly emails.
Be Part of the Online Discussion
The internet is full of online communities made up of industry leaders and experts and also outdoor enthusiasts. Become a part of these communities and find out what questions are being asked and which topics are being discussed around all things adventure.
Sites like Reddit and Quora are a great place to start. They allow you to ask your own questions or see what others are talking about. Once you know what the ‘hot topics’ are, you can create content for your Outdoor Brand around these ideas and conversations.
Website Analytics
Your own website analytics can give you an insight into specific services or products that your target audience are interested in too. You can do this by looking at your top ten most viewed pages on your website every month.
The most popular pages on your website are generally the things your audience want to know more about, so why not create content that goes into more detail about those services, products or members of your team?
